Burma, America, The World, Art, Literature, Political Economy through the eyes of a Permanent Exile.
"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the oppressed. Sometimes we must interfere. . . There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention . . . writers and poets, prisoners in so many lands governed by the left and by the right." Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Speech, 1986, Oslo.
This entire site copyright Kyi May Kaung unless indicated otherwise.

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo was very much an "owngoal" for Beijing. Quite likely he would not have won if China had notmade a crude and overt threat to the Norwegians that relations wouldsuffer if Liu did get it. The Norwegian committee was thus pushed intoshowing that it was independent and could not be threatened.

The threat and the subsequent Beijing "outrage" is yet anotherdemonstration, following spats with Japan, India and its South ChinaSea neighbors, of how China's global standing is being damaged byoutbursts of nationalism. It is not easy to tell to what extent thesereflect a new arrogance stemming from economic success and an excessof foreign praise or reflect a struggle at the top of the CommunistParty between a liberal and internationalist group and a conservative,nationalist one.

For sure something is going on. Liu's award coincided with a visit toEurope by Premier Wen Jiabao during which he made a veryliberal-sounding speech about the need for democracy and free speech.This has not been reported in China itself. It seems unlikely that Wenis so disingenuous that he would make such a speech for foreignconsumption and deliberately suppress it at home. As Willy Lam notedin Asia Sentinel on Aug. 30, it appears a rivalry is growing betweenWen and China's leader Hu Jintao. In Shenzhen on Aug. 20, Wensurprised local cadres by appearing to criticize unnamed ChineseCommunist Party officials for dragging their feet on political reform,saying that without it "it will be impossible for the goal of economicreform and modernization to be realized." That has been perceived as ashot at Hu.

The Nobel committee did have one foreign critic, self-styled AsianValues guru Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew Schoolof Public Policy. Former diplomat Mahbubani complained that the prizereflected western views and that the Nobel committee awarded the prizeto Asians who were dissidents. This was just the sort of half-truththat one expects from Singapore apologists for authoritarian regimessimilar to their own. It also reflects Singapore's attempts to appearultra-Asian while aligning its economic and strategic interests withthe west.

Only one of these—Iranian Shirin Ebadi—could be described as adissident at the time of the award. Kim Dae Jung was an electedpresident, Aung San Suu Kyi had won an election—but then had theresult overthrown. (Imagine if the British had locked up "dissident"Lee Kuan Yew after his election victory in 1959 and left him to rot injail for decades as Lee did to his Barisan Sosialis opponents).

Of the others, East Timor's Horta had made peace with Indonesia and LeDuc Tho had made a sort of peace with the US. The Dalai Lama is nodissident among his own Tibetan people, only to Beijing and itslackeys. He has been the Tibetan peoples' leader for more than half acentury and is also revered by Mongols in neighboring countries.Mother Teresa and Mohammad Yunus were apolitical, one a selflesssocial worker, the other a great innovator of microcredit. Eisaku Satowas a former Japanese prime minister.

Mahbubani claims that the prize should have gone to Asians like DengXiaoping for bringing so many out of poverty. He apparently prefers toforget the Tiananmen massacre and the fact that Deng is dead. Surely abetter choice would have been Zhao Ziyang, the man who initiatedChina's economic reform when he was in charge of Sichuan, opposed theTiananmen violence—and paid the price of spending his remaining yearsunder house arrest.

One does not have to be a defender of all Nobel awards—Obama last yearis a case in point—or that some people, including Gandhi, who shouldhave won it never did. But Liu fits into good company, which includesformer non-Asian "dissidents" such as anti-apartheid leader AlbertLuthuli and Polish democracy Lech Walesa as well as the variousapolitical individuals and organizations who have also won. Theattempt to demean the award to Liu is all too typical of the officialSingapore mindset.

Criticism of the west today would be more usefully focused onAfghanistan and Pakistan. The daily woes of the NATO forces are asmuch due to the state of affairs in Pakistan as to the Taliban inAfghanistan. The recent destruction of dozens of fuel supply tankersis just the most visible evidence of Pakistan's inability to providesecurity to NATO supply lines. The war crosses the border but Pakistangets angry when any of its own people get killed as a result as thoughcivilian deaths are avoidable in such a conflict.

NATO and its equivocal Afghan ally, Mohamed Karzai and his cronies,cannot win in the face of a Pakistan majority which does not want theTaliban but is unwilling to give full support to the US. India doesnot help either. Its Afghan meddling merely makes Pakistan's ISI moredetermined to keep influence over the Taliban.

The war could also only be won by the west if it is prepared to suffermuch bigger casualties – which it is not. Yet the US lacks thepolitical will to recognize reality. The Pakistanis created what hasbecome the Taliban monster. Let them deal with it. Instead of reducingEl Qaeda threats to western targets, the war is simply adding to theranks of western-born jihadists.

I am reminded that in 1880 the British Liberal leader WilliamGladstone won an election partly on the platform that the war thatBritain was conducting in Afghanistan was immoral as well as futile.Leading generals mostly supported his decision when he became primeminister to get out and stay out of a country where they were notwanted.

Unfortunately Obama seems to lack the courage to cut knots. Perhaps alandslide defeat in the coming mid-term elections will toughen him up,make him stop listening to pollsters and political strategists withever changing targets and take some bold decisions – like that nastyMr Nixon once did.

An occasion presents itself at the G20 meeting scheduled for Seoul onNovember 11 and 12, hardly more than a week after the US mid-termpolls. Between now and then China will allow some further smallappreciation of its currency. Host South Korea will pretend that it isnot manipulating the won and other countries from Brazil to Malaysiamay set up new barriers to reduce pressure for currency appreciation.

But all those measures simply underline how lopsided the internationalsystem has become. A US insistence on reciprocity in access to theTreasury bond market would force both China and the US to stopavoiding the inter-related issues of China's rigged exchange rate andthe US low savings rate.

Such a measure would likely push up US bond yields and cause marketconsternation – as did Nixon's abandonment of gold convertibility in1971. But it would be a recognition that global imbalances have foryears been unsustainable and that the long they continue the worse theeventual derailment of the system. The 2008 financial meltdown didproduce some international cooperation to improve banking regulationand offset the sudden contraction of credit. But almost nothing hasbeen done to alter fundamental imbalances resulting from both riggedexchange rates (particularly by China) and absurdly low interest rateswhich are leading to the current rush into gold and commodities.

Frankly I am not hopeful of Obama. Not only is he a naturalcompromiser but appears to lack advisers with either the sort ofintellectual muscle which Kissinger gave to the Nixon White House, orthe stomach for high-risk moves.

Philip Bowring is a contributing editor and founder of Asia Sentinel.This article appears on Asia Sentinel on Monday.

FAIR USE NOTICEThis site contains some copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000107----000-.html. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.